Used to work in a pretty sizable Sainsbury’s up until last year. I never dealt with physical abuse from a customer, but I did hear about a fair bit of it, especially from the female members of staff.
Customers would come in and start being incredibly inappropriate to them. You’d hear that one customer had patted them on the bottom, or grabbed their hand. One customer would routinely come in and start trying to kiss my partner’s hand (we worked together). You report this behaviour to management and at best it’s laughed off.
Don’t even get me started on the behaviour some customers think they’re entitled to push on staff who are unfortunate enough to have to do reductions in the evening; grabbing, pushing, shouting, you name it, it’s done. Management are adamant it has to be done on the shop floor though, why? You tell me.
Ultimately what I’m trying to say is that a lot of these sort of things might be less prominent if management came out and backed their colleagues when a customer was showing signs of being a t*at. Fitting them with cameras makes it look like another profit protection measure.
These are criminal acts right? Why are they even being escalated through management, shouldn’t they just go to the police directly?
Manager here’s a copy of the police report for what happened last night, when I was assaulted while stocking shelves. Doesn’t really give them any wiggle room
Fitting them with cameras makes it look like another profit protection measure.
I was nodding along till here. Wouldn’t fitting employees with body cameras making it easier to prosecute the criminals? Lack of evidence is probably the issue in most cases.
Because in my experience (15 years of supermarket work) I’ve never seen anything get treated as importantly as they treat profit protection.
Sorry, I’m being dense this Sunday. How does this protect profit? Surely fitting employees with body cams eats into your profit as it is a cost?
After 1900 our Tesco local has their doors locked and you have to be let in. Why are people such pricks. I work on the railway and someone threatened to stab me over a £4 ticket the other day. I just fucking hate people.
Crime goes up when desperation levels go up. People are desperate. Agreed, it’s wrong that it puts you in danger, but you are the face of the corporation they are angry at. It’s misdirected anger.
I hope you give your employers an earful for putting you in that vulnerable position.
I went to Asda not long after lockdown had lifted the first time and said something standard to the lady on the checkout like “long day?” and she looked at me with hollow eyes and told me that when she’d told a woman they’d run out of toilet roll the customer spat in her face. Some people are the worst.
Sometimes you can tell the checkout asst is just fucking done having the same basic conversation 100x and wants to scan silently, but I always try and inject a bit of happiness into their day if they’ve not fallen mute. Working any public-facing retail job is bloody awful… speaking from personal experience, I used to temp at Toys R Us at christmas and let me tell you, there’s no more entitled creature than a parent at christmas who has left it too late to get this years most popular toy.
BUT *MYYYYY * CHIIIIIILD
If someone is already assaulting a member of staff, what stops them just stealing the camera?
Call me cynical, but it sounds like a disguise for a profit protection thing.
